


Harrow’s funeral thoughts

by artaline



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Magic, Meta, Speculation, Swearing, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 22:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17610116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artaline/pseuds/artaline
Summary: Short meta regarding magic and Viren's possible motivations initially postedon tumblr.





	Harrow’s funeral thoughts

  * Opeli is extra pissed at Viren for not letting them properly mourn Harrow.
  * Viren says early funeral is a necessity, because of the coronation, but ultimately it just makes the whole endeavor look extra suspicious to Opeli, and the rest. It looks like Viren is losing a lot more by pushing extra early funeral, than by compromising at say, a day of mourning - he doesn’t exactly have any reasons to expect that Amaya would meet the princes at Banta Lodge and stop the coronation.
  * So, seemingly, there really isn’t a good reason to push for early funeral, apart from “Viren is a dramatic bitch”. But,  **let’s for a moment assume, that there is an actual reason driving him to finish the funeral this very night** , what could this be?
  * We know from Rayla that an elemental  **mage usually needs a primal energy**  to cast a spell, and that primal stones allow to circumvent that need.
  * From the worldbuilding we know that moon magic is the magic of illusions and concealment, as well as that moonshadow elves are the most powerful during full moon. Which means that  **by extension moon mages are also the most powerful during full moon**.
  * So, perhaps, the reason for the early and dramatic funeral is that  **Viren needs to maintain some illusion**. There was also info (from the interview or con panel, sorry can’t remember the source) that moon mage needs to be actively controlling the illusion, like Lujanne does with her spiders. That then explains why Viren has to ask Claudia to light the funeral pyre (I initially thought that, perhaps, doing dark magic in public could trigger the loss of the glamour, but it’s clear from the scene with Callum’s voice that this is not the case), instead of doing it himself.
  * Admittedly, we really don’t know enough about Viren’s motivation to say for sure, but an  **obvious suspect for the illusion would be Harrow’s body**. Then question is, what could possibly be wrong with it that could require illusion?
  * Now, either it’s not Harrow’s body at all, and illusion was meant for Opeli and co to identify, or the body is bearing signs of the dark magic/soulfang bite.
  * Soulfang version would be relatively straightforward, plenty already voiced the idea of Pip!Harrow.
  * The full body version is more convoluted, because as we know elf magic sees Harrow as dead. But we also know from the credits, that  **elf magic also parses Runaan as dead**  (judging by Tinker’s reaction), and so, perhaps, having a soul ripped out of the body could work well enough for the assassin bindings to accept that Harrow is dead too.
  * Not quite clear how could Viren time it just so that binding would fall off when needed, but a relatively simple save for this would be having bindings take effect only under direct moonlight. But, even if that’s not the case, we really don’t see Viren after the corridor scene straight until funeral, even though he was very present and passive during the fight at the door, and it’s later up to Soren and Claudia to deal with Runaan and other elves.




End file.
